Re: Corpora: the At sign

• Previous message: pernilla@clg2.bham.ac.uk: "Corpora: 6th TELRI Seminar: Registration before October 19th"
• Maybe in reply to: Tadeusz Piotrowski: "Corpora: the At sign"
• Next in thread: John Shippey: "Re: Corpora: the At sign"
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]

Jean Veronis wrote:
>>Dear All
>>I have a slightly unusual request: what do the speakers of various languages
>>call the at sign (@), as in the email addresses?
>
>In French, it is called "arobas" or "arrobas" - etymology unclear.
>Probably from "a rond bas de casse" (round a lower case). Nothing to
>do with the Spanish unit of measure with the same name.

hmmmm... In Spanish it is called "arroba" (a unit of measure, said to
be abbreviated with an especially shaped "a" resembling the "@"
sign). My guess is that French " 'arobas' or 'arrobas' " must have
the same origin, or being a borrow from modern Spanish, the "a rond
bas de casse" being a not-quite-folk etymology.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Daniel Riaño Rufilanchas
Madrid, España
POR FAVOR, tomad nota de mi nueva dirección de correo: danielrr@eresmas.net

• Next message: John Shippey: "Re: Corpora: the At sign"
• Previous message: pernilla@clg2.bham.ac.uk: "Corpora: 6th TELRI Seminar: Registration before October 19th"
• Maybe in reply to: Tadeusz Piotrowski: "Corpora: the At sign"
• Next in thread: John Shippey: "Re: Corpora: the At sign"
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]

This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 09:04:45 MET DST